


The Morning After (and the Night Before)

by Lazy8



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alcohol, Crack, Drunk Humor, Gen, Hangover, Humor, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lazy8/pseuds/Lazy8
Summary: Just look after a drunk nonbender for one night and make sure he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else. How hard can it be?Zuko is starting to regret approximatelyallof his life choices.
Relationships: Sokka & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846456
Comments: 6
Kudos: 87
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	The Morning After (and the Night Before)

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt:** Kind Restraints  
>  **Hurt Character:** Other/Your Choice  
>  **Comforting Character(s):** Zuko

"Zuko. Zuko. Zuuuuuuukoooooooo. Hey, Firelord Hotpants!"

The Fire Lord in question let out a sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was beginning to regret approximately _all_ of his life choices—starting with being born. " _What?_ "

"Can we go back down to the harbor now?"

"No."

"But—"

" _No_."

"Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaase?"

Zuko gritted his teeth. "Sokka, the _last_ time I let you onto one of those ships, you almost blew it up!"

"I just wanted to see how the boiler worked." Sokka fidgeted. "So can you show me—"

" _No_."

Sokka stuck his lower lip out in a pout that was much better suited to a cranky toddler than to a thirty-something war hero. "You're no fun."

Zuko rolled his eyes. There was no point in arguing with Sokka when he was this inebriated. "Yep, that's me. No-fun guy."

Sokka didn't answer, just squirmed a bit more and continued to sulk.

* * *

They'd been celebrating the anniversary of the end of the war. There had been alcohol involved. In hindsight, he probably should have foreseen the impending disaster.

Normally, _Katara_ was the one who took charge of babysitting Sokka when he decided to celebrate a bit too hard—Aang didn't have the discipline, Suki had a job to do, and Toph had a bad habit of egging him on. This year, though, Katara was far too pregnant to spend the whole night chasing her brother from one end of the Caldera to the other, and Zuko had taken one look at her frazzled appearance before telling her to go ahead and rest, that he'd keep a watch on Sokka until he sobered up, and how hard could it be to make sure that a single inebriated nonbender made it through the night out of jail and in one piece?

Zuko hated his life. So. _Much_.

Not fifteen minutes after Katara and Aang had retired to their room, Zuko had turned his back for two minutes to get himself a drink of water, only to turn around and find Sokka gone. After at least half an hour of frantically combing every inch of the palace and mentally cycling through all of the different ways Katara could kill him for losing her brother, he'd finally located Sokka standing in front of one of the flame locks that opened onto one of the palace's many secret passages, poking it with a torch.

"What in Agni's name do you think you're _doing?_ " Zuko, horrified, had snatched the torch, which had been tilting dangerously toward the floor, from Sokka's hand; though a palace occupied by firebenders had been sensibly built primarily out of metal and stone, he still didn't like to contemplate what would happen if the rug caught fire.

"I just wanted to see how it worked," Sokka had protested as Zuko had grabbed him by the elbow and led him firmly back toward his room.

"Ask me again when you're sober."

* * *

From then on, he'd vowed not to take his eyes off of Sokka again… only to have him pull another disappearing act right when Zuko least expected it.

To Zuko's credit, he hadn't _actually_ taken his eyes off of Sokka this time. He just hadn't thought it would make that much of a difference that Sokka had moved to his _left_ side. So _what_ if neither his eyesight nor his hearing had been fully functional on that side since he was thirteen? He'd learned how to compensate to the point that most people didn't even _notice_ ; if he could take down multiple trained soldiers while partially blind and deaf without using his bending, _surely_ he could manage to keep an eye on Sokka too.

…except then, he'd suddenly realized he was no longer registering any blurry motion or muffled sound on that side, and turned with a curse already forming on his lips to fully face the truth he'd already suspected: that Sokka had managed to slip away from him once more.

This time, the frantic search had lasted for well over an hour, and he'd found Sokka in the process of dismantling one of the war balloons in an act that probably would have counted as sabotage in someone who'd actually retained any shred of good judgment.

"I helped invent these, you know," he slurred as Zuko took him by the elbow and pulled him firmly away. "One of my greatest moments!"

"Of course you did," Zuko soothed as he led Sokka once more back to his room.

* * *

The third time, Zuko could have sworn he'd done nothing but _blink_ before Sokka had disappeared. This time, they'd found him on one of the ships that lay at anchor in the harbor, fiddling around with the boiler in a way that was about three seconds from making it explode.

* * *

"This is for your own safety," Zuko reiterated as he tied the final knot in the silk cord around Sokka's wrists. A similar length of cord was already binding his ankles. "To say nothing of the safety of everyone around you."

"Awwwwww, but Zuko—!"

Zuko leaned back and crossed his arms, unrelenting. "I'll let you up when you're sober again." Sokka's only response was to look up at him with large puppy eyes. Zuko sighed, and rubbed his forehead. "Are you uncomfortable?"

"Um… no?"

"Then you've got nothing to complain about."

* * *

Five minutes later, the cords were on the floor and Zuko was once more sprinting through the halls of the palace to retrieve Sokka and bring him back somewhere he couldn't do any damage.

Over the course of the rest of the night, Zuko came to the conclusion that the only way to make _absolutely sure_ that Sokka stayed in one place while he was drunk and had a bad idea would be to physically sit on him—and he even had doubts about how well _that_ would work.

He had tried _everything_. He'd tried tying Sokka up. He'd tried tying him to a chair. He'd tried locking him in a room—a room he _knew_ wasn't connected to any secret passages. He'd tried tying him to a chair _inside_ of a locked room. Each time, he'd made sure not to take his eyes off of Sokka for even so much as a second. Each time, despite normally being about as stealthy as a stampeding herd of Komodo rhinos, Sokka had still somehow managed to disappear right out from under his nose only to reappear a few minutes later in a completely different part of the palace (or, if he was _especially_ unlucky, in a completely different part of the _city_ ).

"How did you _do_ that?" Zuko demanded again and again. "There was no _possible_ way you could have gotten out of that!"

Sokka would, inevitably, answer with only the non-explanation of pointing to whatever it was he was fiddling with _this_ time, and saying "I wanted to see how it worked."

Finally, about an hour before dawn, Sokka fell asleep.

Zuko's first act was to heft him from the floor and up onto the bed, freezing and holding his breath every time Sokka snored or twitched in his sleep. Then, hardly daring to breathe for fear that Sokka would wake up and pull yet _another_ disappearing act, he stood for a few minutes and watched Sokka sleep, his whole body practically thrumming with tension as he waited for the inevitable—but then five minutes passed, and then ten, and Sokka still had not stirred, and Zuko began to accept that the ordeal had _finally_ come to an end.

He still tied their wrists together for good measure before climbing into bed with Sokka and wrapping both arms around his waist to make absolutely _sure_ he didn't move again.

* * *

As far as morning-afters went, this was definitely one of Sokka's weirder ones. He was probably going to have to puzzle out at some point why he'd woken up with all of his clothes on inside out, his hands covered with soot, and a Fire Lord in his bed (with their wrists tied together, no less)—but all of that could wait until _after_ his sister woke up and he managed to wheedle her into getting rid of the pounding in his head.

His fuzzy-headed, won't-someone-please-put-me-out-of-my-misery pity party was interrupted by someone slamming a cup of tea down on the table in front of him—a lot more noisily than was necessary, in his not-so-humble opinion.

"Do you _mind?_ " he groaned, curling his forearms over his head. "I'm sort of dying here."

From in front of him, there was an irate huff, and then the scraping of a chair as the other person sat down across from him. " _Trust_ me," Zuko's voice said, and wouldn't you know, he sounded nearly as miserable as Sokka felt. " _I'm_ not the one who needs to be more considerate here." He let out a groan of his own, and Sokka peeked out from under the dark shelter of his arms to see that Zuko was mirroring his posture. "I'm _never_ taking over babysitting duties for Katara again."

**Author's Note:**

> Man, I'm really in the mood to write some self-indulgent angst and whump. Give me the angst prompts! Give me aaaaaaaallllllll the angst prompts!
> 
> *gets angst prompt*
> 
> *writes crack*


End file.
